Adviser to Chief Minister Punjab on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique on Friday said that all public hospitals would provide free treatment to the children housed with the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau.
He said teenagers could be brought to the Children’s Hospital where paediatricians would treat them.
Rafique said this during a visit to the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau. CPWB chairperson Begum Saba Sadiq, Health DG Zahid Pervaiz, CPWB Director General Muhammad Yasrab Hanjra, Children’s Hospital Medical Director Dr Ahsan Waheed Rathore and a team of paediatricians accompanied him. Rafique visited every room at the bureau to meet the children.
Sadiq told Rafique that formal education and vocational training was being provided to children at the bureau. She said around 300 orphans, homeless and poor children were under CPWB’s care. She said sometimes parents gave up their children at the bureau due to poverty and some children were abandoned after their parents got divorced.
Sadiq said a few children had been found in garbage containers. She said workers of the bureau looked after the children in the best possible way. She said paediatrician Dr Ahmed Nadeem was available at the bureau but services of one doctor were insufficient.
She said the bureau was also working in other districts. She said that services of a gynaecologist were required for girls.
Rafique said all government hospitals would provide free treatment to children at the protection bureau. He asked the health director general to instruct the administration of all government hospitals in Punjab in this regard.
Irish delegation calls on health secretary
A delegation of International College of Ambulance, Health Department, Ireland, headed by Macartan Huges, head of the Department Educational Ambulance Services-NASC-Dublin Ireland, and Dr R.K. Shehzad, the managing director of Disaster Response of Ireland, held a meeting with Health Secretary Ijaz Muneer at his office on Friday.
The Irish delegation offered their services in training and doctors, nurses and paramedics attached with ambulance services of all the hospitals in the Punjab and provision of equipment for these services.
The secretary health said Said Mitha Teaching Hospital in Lahore would be used as a pilot project for the training programme.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 17th, 2014.